'Rwanda clamping down on political opponents'

Kigali - A Rwandan opposition party and a rights group said on Wednesday that the authorities were clamping down on political opponents six months before the presidential election."Opposition party members are facing increasing threats, attacks and harassment in advance of Rwanda's August 2010 presidential election," said Human Rights Watch.The New York-based rights group urged the government to investigate all such incidents and to "ensure that opposition activists are able to go about their legitimate activities without fear".An opposition leader who returned from exile last month to run in the elections was taken in for questioning by the police on Wednesday.The criminal investigation department... today summoned Mrs Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza without giving any reason," said Ingabire's FDU party."Obviously this branch of the executive is carrying out the injunction of the president of the Republic the day before yesterday," the group said, referring to a declaration by President Paul Kagame at a press conference.Rwandan police spokesman Eric Kayiranga confirmed that Ingabire had been questioned and later allowed to return home.The Rwanda News Agency quoted Kagame on Monday as charging that Ingabire was "making comments and doing all her activities illegally and as an 'individual' because her party has not been registered".Her questioning followed the jailing of her assistant, Joseph Ntawangundi, who was sentenced in absentia in 2007 to 19 years by a gacaca court, one of the grassroots tribunals set up to try perpetrators of the 1994 genocide.The FDU says that Ntawangundi was in Sweden on a training course at the time of the genocide.Ntawangundi and Ingabire were last week attacked at a municipal office in the capital.Ingabire escaped but Ntawangundi told Human Rights Watch he had been "attacked for about 45 minutes by scores of young men who punched, kicked and scratched me, threw me into the air, and ripped my clothes".Kayiranga played down the incident, saying the two had been attacked by people in the queue who were angered because they had been attended to before others who "had been waiting for days".Human Rights Watch said another new opposition party, the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, had also suffered "serious incidents of intimidation" by individuals close to the government and the ruling party."The Rwandan government already tightly controls political space," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch."These incidents will further undermine democracy by discouraging any meaningful opposition in the elections," she said.Human Rights Watch said that in 2009 several meetings of the Green Party and PS-Imberakuri - another opposition party - had been broken up by the police.PS-Imberakuri finally managed to register in November. Human Rights Watch said that the Green Party had still not succeeded in registering, and its members had come under pressure to give up their political activities."This escalation of attacks against opposition party members does not bode well for the election," said Gagnon. Kagame, who has been in power since the end of the genocide, has been regularly accused of muzzling the opposition and is widely expected to seek and secure re-election in August.